For serious and art cinema audiences, this is a cinema essay.

East Asian cinema has been preoccupied with ghost stories for more than a decade.  How much of it is part of the culture of the region, how much religious belief or how much of it is a successful trend that has been imitated by Hollywood?

A conversation with Bruno Dumont might prove a difficult feat.  His films are frequently raw and, despite the title of his most famous film, he does not portray a great deal of humanity on screen.  At least, not in the humane sense.  Humanity, for him, seems to be harsh and mundane.  His characters seem to lack a moral basis for their lives and behave brutally.

If Morgan Spurlock had seen Fast Food Nation (or read the book by Eric Schlosser who co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Linklater), there would have been no 30 days of eating at McDonald’s and no ‘Super Size Me’.  He would have sworn off burgers instantly and forever.

No, not public or government elections.  Rather, the election of the head of a traditional Chinese gangster mob.  Johnnie To has shown in recent years that he can direct smart, political action films like Breaking News and the original Election.

Above the title is the place and date, Buenos Aires, 1977.  It is Argentina in the second year of the dictatorship of the Generals.

It is almost a cliché to describe a film as Altmanesque. However, this does serve as a shortcut to saying that there are several strands of plot which cross at various times and interconnect.

Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, the film is very contemporary in its portrayal of luxury in Cannes and the effect of migrants in France from the Balkans.  While there are crimes, including robbery and murder, this element is made quite secondary to the dramatic personal interactions.

For several years, Nanni Moretti (La Stanza del Figlio, Caro Diario) has been on public record as taking a stand against Silvio Berlusconi.  He had been preparing a documentary on him but moved to this narrative which combines making a film about Berlusconi with a final critique of the man, his policies and his destructive influence on Italy and Italian politics.

Is this the William Friedkin who won an Oscar for The French Connection all those decades ago, then made The Exorcist? Is this the William Friedkin who has never really matched these earlier successes?  Well, yes.  And this film does not match them either.  But it will have a lot of people talking.

Is this the William Friedkin who won an Oscar for The French Connection all those decades ago, then made The Exorcist? Is this the William Friedkin who has never really matched these earlier successes?  Well, yes.  And this film does not match them either.  But it will have a lot of people talking.

A very fine film.

This is very much a mood film, an unpredictable blend of naturalism, dream and surrealism. Liking it will depend on moods.  It is also a rather creepy film.  The central character and his behaviour are definitely creepy.

A very impressive first film.  When one hears that it is about teenage problems and high school crises, expectations are that it will be a variation on the jocks and bimbos of American high school movies.  It is not.  It stands on its own, all the more striking that the writer-director has had practically no training and was born in 1984, making him 20 when he was working on the film.  He had no Government assistance in making it.

Your Name is Justine is a frightening melodrama about the white slave trade.  During the 1990s, especially after the fall of the Soviet empire, traffic in women to the West and to the Middle East increased dramatically.  A powerful film about this same them, more powerful than this film, is Amos Gitai’s Promised Land. 

It’s the old terrified baby-sitter plot all over again.  The makers have looked at Fred Walton’s film of this name from 1979 where Carol Kane was menaced by a murderous stranger and have adapted it to the present.  And, acknowledging that they are not really trying to be original, they have succeeded in making a scary picture.  The rating is a 12A or a PG 13.

Two years ago, multiplexes around the UK screened the documentary Super Size Me.  It was a persuasive look at how Morgan Spurlock ate only at McDonald’s for a month and the effect that it had on his health.  McDonalds had to take notice.

Appalling.

It is almost five years since the hijacking of the American commercial planes on September 11th 2001, the crashes into the twin towers in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington DC.  The fourth plane was United 93, from Newark to San Francisco.

Soaps on TV are not like life.  They are life heightened (or lowered depending on one’s point of view).  We get some spoof sequences of TV soaps during this film.  Perhaps, the director is saying that life is like a soap.  However, in Denmark, life is much more serious than a soap even when, on paper, it might sound like one.